LEAKS/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump and his aides shifted their damage control strategy on Tuesday [5-16-17], defending Trump’s conversation with Russian officials about allegedly classified information as ‘wholly appropriate’ and instead blaming leakers for wreaking havoc.
Tuesday’s tone marked a shift from the tack taken Monday evening by the Trump administration, with multiple aides – including national security adviser H.R. McMaster – aggressively pushing back against a Washington Post story alleging that the president had shared highly sensitive information with two Russian diplomats as ‘false.’
By late Tuesday morning, McMaster was calling the ‘premise’ of the article false while refusing to deny that Trump had shared classified information and only saying that ‘we don’t say what’s classified, what’s not classified.’
‘What I will tell you is in the context of that discussion, what the president discussed with the foreign minister was wholly appropriate to that conversation and is consistent with the routine sharing of information between the president and any leaders with whom he’s engaged,’ McMaster told reporters in the White House briefing room.”
-Louis Nelson, “White House shifts to vigorously defending Trump’s Russia meeting,” Politico, May 16, 2017 1:54pm